1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable storage device in which a storage cartridge containing a storage medium is removably loaded, a method of controlling the portable storage device, a control program for executing the method, and an electronic information apparatus including the portable storage device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been made progress in the downsizing and performance improvement of component parts used in information processors, and portable notebook personal computers are now widely used. The proliferation of personal computers including the notebook personal computers is very remarkable, and an increasing number of people own, for example, a desktop personal computer and a notebook personal computer at their workplaces, and a plurality of personal computers at home.
Under these circumstances, users desire to manage data stored in a hard disk within a personal computer in a centralized fashion, or carry a large volume of data to use the data with a plurality of personal computers as required.
Further, due to the widespread use of digital cameras and digital video cameras, there are a increasing number of occasions when images taken by the cameras are processed. The images taken by a digital camera or video camera have large data volume, and especially the data volume of a moving picture is very large, which causes a problem that the capacity of a hard disk for storing such images becomes insufficient in a short time.
To overcome this problem, the capacity of newly-developed hard disks is increasing at a very sharp rate year after year. In the meanwhile, users using a hard disk with a small capacity come to have an increasing desire to replace the currently used hard disk with one having a larger capacity.
To cope with these demands and problems, there has been proposed a portable storage device easy to carry, which uses a removable portable storage cartridge (hereinafter referred to as “a removable hard disk cartridge”) that contains a hard disk and is easily replaceable.
In the portable storage device of the above-mentioned type, however, it is necessary for a user to manually load/unload a removable hard disk cartridge in/from a main unit, and hence the removable hard disk cartridge can be erroneously removed from the main unit during access to its hard disk. If this happens, data stored in the hard disk can be destroyed, and in the worst case, all of important data is lost.
Another demand is that a removable hard disk cartridge can be automatically loaded/unloaded in/from the main unit as easily as a VTR cassette.
To meet the demand, a loading device enabling automatic operation for loading/ejecting a removable hard disk cartridge, using a simple means has been proposed by the present assignee e.g. in Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-364308.
Further, there has been proposed a disk array device including an automatic ejecting mechanism for automatically ejecting a damaged disk drive or the like (see e.g. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publications (Kokai) Nos. H10-254649 and H10-301719.)
However, as is well known, the hard disk device is vulnerable to shock due to its mechanical construction. This vulnerability of the hard disk has been overcome to some extent due to various technical improvements recently attained, with increased shock-resistance thereof. Nevertheless, it is still desirable to prevent shock or impact from being applied to the hard disk device during access operation for reading or writing, apart from when the hard disk device is in a standby state in which the magnetic head is in the shipping position.
However, when the automatic loading/ejecting mechanism is employed for loading/unloading the removable hard disk cartridge, accidental shock or impact can be applied to the hard disk device during access operation for reading or writing. To avoid this shock or impact, loading/ejecting operations can be performed only at an operating speed which causes practically no shock, or more precisely, at an operating speed which does not cause shock above a permissible level.
Thus, there is a limit imposed on the speed of loading/ejecting operations, and therefore, when an unintended disk is erroneously inserted, when a disk without an access right is inserted, or especially when an unformatted disk or a disk formatted in a format that is not compatible with the main unit is inserted, it takes time from loading of the disk to ejection of the same, which is annoying to the user.
In the prior art, however, no technical idea has been disclosed for increasing the speed of automatic loading/ejecting operations for a removable hard disk cartridge formatted in a format that cannot be handled or an unformatted removable hard disk cartridge.
Neither has been disclosed any technical idea for preventing data stored in a hard disk from being destroyed due to access to the hard disk during a loading operation or an ejecting operation.